Tom Glover

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our Club President, Mr Tom Glover.

Tom joined Rugeley Rifle Club in 1977 when he brought his young son Dave along to learn to shoot. In that time he has served various roles on the committee and his service to the club over almost 50 years is truly admired and respected.

Tom has been one of the most generous people the club has had as a member, time is the most precious commodity we have and Tom always gave his time to members willingly and without hesitation.

He leaves behind his wife Beryl, son Dave, two grandsons and three great grandchildren and will be surely missed.

To quote Tom “Thanks for coming”.

Rugeley members support British Shooting Target Sprint Series

Rugeley Rifle Club members supported the West Midlands leg of British Shooting’s Target Sprint Series today. Martyn, Mick and Michelle were on hand as stewards and range officers. The event took place on the outdoor ranges at the NSRA’s Aldersley Shooting Centre at the Aldersley Leisure Village.

Rugeley have been a huge supporter of British Shooting events in the Midlands, with members also volunteering at the British Schools Championship Finals.

Richard finishes second in Torfaen Open

Rugeley shooter Richard Hemingway won his squad, and finished second in X-Class this weekend at the Torfaen Open Championship.

Contested at Long Ashton District Rifle Club near Bristol, the match is a 60-shot course of fire on Megalink electronic targets. Shooting on the second squad of the day, Richard’s score of 616.2 bested top shooters including Simon Green. Overall, he was left behind Alan Bain, who had managed an excellent 621.0 on the first detail.

Rugeley awarded Performance Club status by NSRA

Rugeley Rifle Club is delighted to have been registered as an NSRA Performance Club.

Scan of a certificate showing that Rugeley Rifle Club is registered as an NSRA Performance Club

NSRA Performance Clubs are those with an ethos of competition and athlete development. Achieving recognition as a Performance Club is testament to the hard work by the club committee and members in developing the facilities to allow quality training activities – particularly the new club room, training building and availability of electronic targets at 10m and 50m. It also recognises the effort by the club’s volunteer instructors and coaches, not only in developing athletes, but also providing support and continued development for instructors and coaches.

A cone depicts a performance pathway, with clubs feeding into performance clubs. These lead to Regional and National squads, culminating at a World Class Programme.

Rugeley RC joins the Fediverse

We’re delighted to announce our newest social channel – the Fediverse! Using the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, this site is now also an ActivityPub instance. All news posts from this site will be accessible, and users can follow our feed from their accounts on any federated server. Find us at “rugeleyrifleclub@www.rugeleyrifleclub.org.uk”.

ActivityPub is the foundation underlying a new type of social media, where users can run their own servers or join other public servers, which can all communicate with one another – think of it like email. You can send an email from an Outlook account to a Yahoo account. You are not limited to sending email only between Outlook addresses.

No single company controls the “fediverse” – the community of “federated” ActivityPub servers. Anyone can create or join a server – large or small – and follow their friends and interests on that server and other servers. There are a variety of different types of instance. Pixelfed is oriented towards image sharing, much like instagram. You may have heard of Mastodon in the news – which is more like Twitter. If you’re interested, the easiest route is to visit joinmastodon.org, pick a server (it really doesn’t matter which) and have an explore. mastodonapp.uk is a UK-oriented server, which may be a good place to start, but you can access accounts on any server from any other server and you can move your account later on if you want to.

Youth Camp Finals

Saturday saw the delayed Shooting Final from the August Youth Shooting Camp run in collaboration with Vysions Youth Volunteer Service. Participants worked their way through air rifle, air pistol and smallbore rifle for an aggregate contest.

Congratulations to Jessica and Hollie, who won a year’s free membership to Rugeley Rifle Club! A huge thanks to all the volunteers who helped run the Youth Camp and Final.

GB cap for Megan in Suhl

Congratulations to Rugeley member Megan Bamsey, who earned national honours when she was selected to represent Great Britain at the 2023 ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany. The team of five competed across Air Rifle and Air Pistol disciplines. Megan placed 91st in the Women’s Air Rifle, between teammates Rhona Love and Seren Thorne. In the Mixed Pairs, Megan placed 35th with Bertie Galloway.